TIM OCKENDEN/PA

COMING HOME: The coffin bearing Roberts was one of 11 brought back to an R.A.F. base in Oxfordshire last week

He Was Adamant He Was Doing the Right Thing
	The war comes home to the U.K. with the body of Steven Roberts, the first Briton killed in combat
	By KATE NOBLE | Wadebridge

Posted Sunday, Apr. 21, 2003; 16.47BST
The flag that hung half-mast today
Seemed animate with being
As if it knew for whom it flew
And will no more be seeing.

The British poet laureate John Betjeman, who wrote those lines in 1966, lies buried in the graveyard of the 12th century Church of St. Enodoc in Cornwall. Just a few kilometers away, in the small town of Wadebridge, the flags are hanging low and animated for Sergeant Steven Roberts, who was 33 when he became the first British soldier to die in combat in Iraq.

Roberts' death on the fourth day of the war was a big story in the U.K. newspapers; before he shipped out, Roberts had enjoyed phoning radio talk shows and debating opponents of the war, and of course the papers noted that the war he believed in had claimed his life. But then the war and the papers moved on; Wadebridge still has not. "There's a closeness here in Cornwall," says his friend Nick Yelland, a builder. "When Stevie went down it affected an awful lot of people around here."

Outside the town hall a bank of bouquets lies on the steps under a black-and-white Cornish St. Piran flag and a photograph of Roberts with his wife, Samantha, and mother, Marion. Wherever Roberts went he took the flag, the symbol of his Cornish home, with him. It was with him when he died. The British combat death toll has turned out to be far lighter than many feared — 30 so far — but that's scant consolation for the town. "When you hear that 30 have died, it's just 30 soldiers," says Shaun Beare, a linesman for the local electricity company and close friend of Roberts'. "But to others, it's 30 sons, 30 friends, 30 cousins." This is the story of one.

Last week Roberts' body was flown back to the U.K. with those of 10 others who died in the conflict, and met at an R.A.F. base in Oxfordshire with solemn ceremony by soldiers from the 2nd Royal Tank regiment, in which he served as a commander. As 100 members of the dead soldiers' families looked on in the spring sunshine, pallbearers from each of the men's regiments carried the coffins, draped in Union Jacks, from the aircraft. Roberts was caught up in a civilian riot near al-Zubayr, southwest of Basra. He left his tank in an attempt to pacify the crowds, and was killed when a sniper opened fire. "That was the way he was," says Yelland. "He would try to calm things down before they got out of hand. Perhaps others would have carried on and ignored them, but he wasn't like that. If there was a problem that could be sorted out by peaceful means, that's what he would do. And through his goodness, he came off worst."

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